Cries and Whispers / Viskningar och rop
Director: Ingmar Bergman
Released: 1972
Writers: Ingmar Bergman
Featured Actors: Harriet Anderson, Liv Ullmann, Kari Sylwan
Story: Agnes is dying. Sisters Karin & Maria return to care for her w/ Anna, a servant.
Narration: Memories & Reflections…structure similar to Wild Strawberries…Bergman returns to his 1950’s structure and theme…drama of re-birth, along with religious immanentism of that period, new life…no questions of God’s existence – But fundamental concepts & images of Christ’s passion & communion meal are chief metaphors
Setting: turn of the century (1900) – it’s a film trying to recall something said long ago, that may now be lost
Structure: Like Seventh Seal, Cries & Whispers is an allegory or a morality play
Agnes:
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- 3 episodes or insets
- First & Last – Agnes’ voice accompanied by scenes from the past
- Intro: fade to white, ends w/ red frame
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Sisters & Anna:
- Intro and close w/ red frame
Place 2 parts together and a whole is formed, a person (soul) who experiences the portrait (like Borg in Wild Strawberries) – confronting the self
Each story = self confrontation, story of humiliation & abandonment, moral disgust, failure, shame = turning away or turning toward…turn a loving eye or turn away = second chance w/ Agnes’s agony = opportunity to heal & repair
Agnes: figure of Christ – name means “one who is pure of unblemished” — Agnus Dei = sacrificial lamb
Aesthetics:
Bergman, “I have pictured the inside of the soul as a moist membrane in shades of red.”
An abstract visual poem.”
- Colors are a code
- Sisters and Anna dressed in white, blue, or black
- Agnes in red or white
- Outside is yellow, green, hazy blue
- Inside red everywhere – wine & blood too
- The aesthetics overlay joy in contradiction to the suffering and desolation, the vitality of color resists the spiritual despair and presents hope…it exemplifies Agnes’ vision of compassion and gratitude
- The body as a house for the soul (red = house)
- Four characters loosely represent aspects of the human being
Karin = self awareness & guilt & rational control
Maria = sensuality & self-deception & emotion
Anna = physical ministering & secretiveness
Agnes = reflection & appreciation & faith
Themes:
- Communion
- Abandonment
- Humiliation
- Hope
- Turning Toward/Turning Away
- Memory
Questions
- How does Bergman show that the only one who can die for one’s sins is oneself?
- How does one deal w/ failed communion, despair, and passion?
- Why does Bergman place Bach over the conversation between Maria & Karin, when they seem to be ‘turning toward’ each other?
- What item, not taken by Karin & Maria as they leave, could offer them hope?
- What is the twelfth night?
